


a girl under a single star (cross stitch, silver silk)

by fortunatelyshynerd



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, High School, ancient greek references abound, background fp/fred and fred/mary, background seirra/tom but only a mention, definite overuse of italics, parentdale, teenage angst-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 08:48:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16807363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunatelyshynerd/pseuds/fortunatelyshynerd
Summary: Penelope was named for the loyal wife of the great hero Odysseus who sat and weaved and waited for twenty years until her husband’s return. After dragging her mother upstairs to bed for what felt like the millionth time, Penelope decided she would never wait for anyone. Ever.or,A Penelope character study, throughout the years.





	a girl under a single star (cross stitch, silver silk)

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was written way before 'the midnight club' episode, which proves everything in this completely wrong. I was going to delete this, but decided to post it anyway!

Penelope was named for the loyal wife of the great hero Odysseus who sat and weaved and waited for twenty years until her husband’s return.

Penelope thought that the name suited her mother more than it suited her. Her mother would wait for her father to return home from the university every single night, sewing stupid slogans about _happy homes_ and _blessing this house_ into pillow after pillow, until her fingers pricked with blood and her hands were slow and sloppy from cocktails and pills. After dragging her mother upstairs to bed for what felt like the millionth time, Penelope decided she would never wait for anyone. Ever.

At the stroke of midnight that night, only thirteen, she couldn’t sleep. She heard her father return, even later than usual, stomping up the staircase, slamming the door to his office. She went into her bathroom in the dead of night, locked the door and lit a dripping red candle stolen from the christmas decorations box. She whispered ‘Single forever’ one, twice, thrice into the blue dancing flame; a spell, a wish, _an order_. Penelope looked her darkened reflection in the eyes, resolute in her teenage resolve.

She kept this promise, through middle school, junior high, rolling her eyes at boys that glanced her up and down in the hallways, shooing away the ones that tried to slide into her booth at Pop’s and take a slurp of her cherry cola, turning away from the ones that wolf-whistled to her at cheer practice. Instead she checked her lip gloss in the small compact she kept in her school bag, and turned the page one handed on the translated copy of ‘The Odyssey’ propped up between her fries and double chocolate brownie. Deep into the thickets of Circe’s island, she was rudely disturbed by someone settling into her booth, the opposite side. 

“Ex-cuse me?” she asked incredulously to The Trespasser.

“I won’t disturb you. It’s just there’s nowhere else to sit, and you’ve got a whole four person booth to yourself,” The Trespasser answered, not looking up from the newspaper in his hand.

“So?” she replied angrily. “I was here first! Move!”

He looked up suddenly, sandy hair flopping into his stern blue eyes, ballpoint pen stuck behind one ear. “Well, unless you want me to eat the burger and shake I just ordered off the floor, I am going to sit here, Penelope.”

She recognised The Trespasser now. Hal Cooper sat behind her in English Lit, but she had never really gotten a good look at him. He was like her, and kept to himself; nose perpetually stuck in a book or newspaper, hiding in the Blue and Gold offices at lunch. He was better looking up close than she thought he would be.

“Fine,” she replied curtly, flipping her curtain of red hair over a shoulder and focusing on her book.

“Thank you” Hal said under his breath, twirling his pen in his hand.

“You’re welcome” Penelope replied politely, looking him square in the eyes, before turning back to her book.

They stayed like that for one night, and then two, not speaking or really looking at each other except for Hal silently asking if he could sit down opposite her again.

Then one night, the third night, Hal broke the silence in the noisy diner. “Four letters, Olympian deity?”

Penelope looked up from her milkshake. “What?” 

Hal replied quickly, casual as anything, as if he hadn’t broken the unspoken rules of this arrangement. “Four letters, Olympian deity? Oh, and second letter ‘e’. If that helps?” 

She didn’t even need to think about it. “Hera.”

He smiled widely. “Perfect.”

After quickly jotting down the answer in his scruffy disjointed print, he neatly tore the crossword out of the paper, and folded it neatly, sticking it in his jacket pocket. She must have given him a quizzical look, broken her icy facade for a moment, because he explained, looking somewhat embarrassed, that he collected every completed crossword he did. 

That seemed to fit, this strange boy, who wore windbreakers and slacks in June and had ink stains on every finger on his hands and carried round copies of the New York Times and The Washington Post and Time Magazine like he was a businessman or a famous journalist, about to break the biggest story of his career. 

The next day at school, when Penelope opened her locker, a piece of paper drifted to the floor. When she picked it up, it was a completed crossword. The answers were written in blotchy blue ballpoint, but one was circled in florescent pink highlighter.

 _13 DOWN. 8 LETTERS. Loyal wife to Odysseus, weaver._

When she flipped it over, there was a series of scribbled numbers and a neat printed request. Three words. Nine letters.

_Call me? - Hal_

Hal and Penelope held hands in the dark movie theatre, watching black and white romances play out between loud slurps of a shared red slushie. They curled up on Hal’s creaky brown leather couch watching his old VHS of ‘All The President’s Men’ with the volume turned down low, only springing apart when his mother burst in, balancing a tray of sweating lemonades on her hip. They even went to parties, hand in hand; that summer between sophomore and junior year they became a semi-regular feature at the cheer parties that Penelope had always skipped out on before. Fred Andrews gave the pair a lift home one steamy July night, when Penelope had one too many gin-spiked raspberry sodas. Her lips were stained crimson and she let out peals of giggles at Fred’s stupid stories about his sisters and F.P and the baseball team.

She climbed out of Fred’s dented van and walked, shoes in hand, up the street to her house. She hitched her skirt up, and pulled herself up the wooden trellis, wiggling through her open window, onto her cleared desk. The heavy sweet scent of red roses was thick in the air. Hal talked about staying in Riverdale, taking over the family paper. Maybe she could wait for him. Wait for him to realise he was worth more than this town, that he was more than these two square miles, that she was worth more than this, more than what her father thought she was. Together they were worth a hundred Riverdales, a thousand Sweet Water Rivers, a million Riverdale Highs.

When junior year came around Penelope was made deputy cheer captain. Hal came to football games, not to cheer on F.P Jones and Tom Keller to get to state championships, but to cheer _her._ He brought the whole squad hot chocolates after the game, helped them pack up and gave Alice Smith a ride home to the Southside after one of her fights with F.P, draping his jacket over her slight shoulders while she wept into his chest, giving Penelope a knowing look. 

Her father came to a game once that year. The one against Greendale High. Penelope kept redoing her ponytail in the one mirror in the girl’s changing room until she was elbowed out of the way by Hermione. During half time, she searched him out on the bleachers, and waved at him. He lifted one gloved hand diplomatically in response, before swiftly going back to barking orders at the research fellow he had brought with him. 

Her father began coming home less and less, spending more of his time closeted in his research lab at the university. One late night, the phone on the kitchen wall rang while Penelope was still up, slaving over a history paper.

“Hello, Parker res-”

“Are you Penelope, Penelope Parker?” said the desperate voice on the phone. 

“Yes. What’s the matter?” 

“I’m Doctor Parker’s, I mean, your father’s secretary. And, um… he’s a little…” the woman paused for a second, obviously choosing her words carefully, “intoxicated right now.” 

“So he’s stone drunk?” Penelope asked bluntly.

The secretary sighed into the receiver. “Yes. And someone really needs to pick him up, or, um… campus security will be forced to remove him. And, um… I didn’t really want to call your mother, what with her… condition.”

“Very considerate. Tell them not to throw him in the gulag, keep him in his office, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

Penelope hung up the phone before the woman could reply.

_Crap._

She didn’t even have a car, let alone one she could commandeer at the last minute. Her mind raced, cataloguing people within walking distance, favours she could muster, neighbours she could beg.

Hal had a car. Sure, it had a sticky accelerator and a tendency to stall in hot weather, but it was a car, that she could use, no questions asked. Despite his journalistic ambitions, Hal didn’t pry. He would be fine with this. 

She ran all the way to the Cooper house, so out of breath that she didn’t even notice the beat up bike propped up against the garage door.

When she rang the doorbell, she heard music from inside and then a familiar, muffled, but distinctly female voice ringing out.

“I’ll get it! It’ll be the pizza guy!”

The Coopers never ordered in food.

When the door was flung open, Penelope’s heart stopped in her chest. It was Alice Smith, all blonde hair and blue eyes and black eyeliner, a smile quickly fading from her lips. “Hi, Penelope!” 

“Alice!” Penelope swallowed. Loudly. “Is Hal here? I, um, need to ask him something.”

“Yeah of course he is, you, know we’ve got a tutoring thing on Fridays now, right? Hal!” 

Hal came out from the dining room, rooting through his wallet. “Coming Alice! Did you not have cash, I told you I would pay-” He stopped in his tracks. “Pen? What are you doing here, it’s so late?” 

“I need to borrow your car Hal, just for tonight, I swear” Penelope said, unhappy with the quiver in her voice.

“Of course you can Pen, but why?” 

“Can I tell you later, it’s just, something personal.” She shot a pointed look at Alice, still standing between them in the doorway. 

Hal gave her his car keys, complete with jangling silver key chains from every state he’d driven to (she had even picked out the New Hampshire one). She had watched from the car, checking the mirrors while he and Alice walked back inside the house. She had driven to the university, running a rural red light or two, and parked in the faculty parking lot. She ran to the science building, through the formaldehyde scented corridors to his wood panelled office. He barely even registered her as she, along with the secretary, dragged his six foot three tenured frame down the stairs and piled him into Hal’s tiny car. Her father slept the rest of the journey back to Riverdale, stinking up Hal’s backseat with the smell of liquor and vomit.

She left him on the couch in the living room, and sat down in the matching chair across from him, book in one hand, coffee in the other, watching him so he didn’t choke.

The sun came up, streaked red and angry the next morning. Saturday morning. Her mother didn’t rise from her bed, but her father was angry as soon as he regained even the slightest coherency. He started screaming at her about the stain on the carpet that _he made,_ but she had failed to clean up. He stood up, towering over her, screaming at her for dragging him away from his work, that she didn’t understand that because her _‘lazy cow of a mother’_ didn’t work he had to provide for the family. 

Penelope thought about the pictures of her mother taken before she had gotten married, a beautiful young med student, with flowers gathered in her long red hair, Penelope’s hair.

He yelled that it was his money that paid for her mother to lie in bed all day, and for Penelope to wear nice clothes and go to school. He pulled at her jacket and her shirt and her bracelet and said it was his money that paid for her to dress like this and that it was his money that paid for her to go on stupid, childish dates with that Cooper kid. 

Penelope waited for him to tire himself out and for when he headed back to his study so he could slam the door. Penelope drove Hal’s car to the carwash, and sat in silence through the soapy rinse cycle and read a Cosmo in a beige waiting room while someone cleaned the interior. When she dropped the car off in Hal’s driveway, and pushed the keys through the mail slot, she noticed that the bike was still leaned up against the garage door, gleaming silver in the morning light.

After that night things changed between Penelope and Hal. Hal didn’t do anything, or at least Penelope didn’t have proof that he’d done anything, but things changed all the same. She didn’t drop by the Blue and Gold every lunch break and free period, and he stopped coming to all the games that season and got some freshman to cover the games for the paper. At the parties they still went to, they turned in different directions at the door. Penelope usually found Mary Moore tucked away in some back corner with a bottle of wine and they would talk about cheer and school and gossip, never acknowledging the stories spread about the two of them. Hal would sometimes talk to his old scouting friends, or some of the more popular guys he tutored, but no matter what, at the end of the night he would be chatting animatedly with Alice Smith, both their blonde heads bent close together to catch whatever they were whispering about.

They broke up at Ricky Mantle’s New Year’s Eve Party. The night had started well, Hal picking her up from her house in a smart jacket while she had worn her blue velvet dress. They had hummed along to Christmas songs that were still on the radio, and it was like summer all over again. But as soon as they had got there, she had seen Alice in the same blue dress, and it looked better on her. Penelope made a beeline for the bar, red drink after red drink staining her mouth like the glamorous lipstick she knew she was too pale to pull off. She glowered at Alice and Hal, dancing together on the put up floor, spinning each other around and around like a tipsy Fred and Ginger. 

She felt something shift within her. She put her drink down on the countertop, and walked onto the light up dance floor towards Alice and Hal. Up close the glowing tiles made Alice’s skin glow pink and blue, and Hal’s eyes gleam darker than they used to look.

“May I steal him away for just a second, Alice?”

Alice smiled that million dollar smile of hers. “Of course Pen. You look great.” 

“You too,” Penelope pursed her lips. “Dig the dress.” 

As Alice walked away, the song changed from something fast paced and jazzy to something slow. He offered her his hand, like the prince she had thought he was, and she took it, smiling all the while. They swayed to the song, closer than they had been in weeks, fingers intertwined, chests flush, faces barely an inch away from the other.

“This is nice.” Hal murmured into her ear.

“Sure it is, Hal” Penelope laughed and leaned in closer, their flushed cheeks brushing. This felt right. “We’re over Hal”, she whispered into the shell of his ear.

Before he could make a scene or pull away, Penelope tightened her grip on his shoulder. “She likes you,” gesturing her head towards Alice, leaned against the neon lit bar. “And you like her. Go get her. I give you permission.” 

He started again to say something, but she shushed him. “I’m not waiting for you anymore Hal. I’m not going to wait for you to feel the way you did this summer. You shouldn’t wait for me either, and I’m pretty sure she won’t.” 

She looked him straight in the face, smiling from the red drinks and the music and the freedom. He was so very handsome. Hal looked at her, and twirled her. Her midnight blue skirts span around them. Their hands joined again. “I’m sorry Pen. I didn’t want to ruin this. ” 

Penelope stopped their dancing and held his hand still. “Don’t be sorry Hal, and you didn’t ruin it. You two match. We didn’t.”

After the song stopped, they stayed swaying for a while. She pecked him on the cheek and dabbed at his tearing eyes with a velvety sleeve. She didn’t stay for the countdown, instead taking her good wool coat off the rack and walking the well tread route to Pop’s.

The little bell at the top of the door rang as the ball on TV dropped. 

Mary Moore was in a back booth, nursing a hot chocolate and a box of tissues. Penelope walked over and slid into the opposite side of the booth, like Hal had done last year. 

“Happy New Year, Mary.”

Mary wiped her eyes with her crimson sleeves. “Happy New Year Penelope.” 

After a beat of silence, Penelope decided that it was never good to begin a New Year with a lie. “Hal and I just broke up.” 

“Oh. That sucks.”

Penelope shrugged. “Hey, it was last year. Old news.” 

“Well last year Fred kissed me. And I yelled at him.”

“That sucks.”

“It really didn’t. The boy has a reputation for a reason.” Mary snorted. “Fred just kissed me, and I yelled at him. That’s so stupid. And I’m here. I missed the only good party that is ever thrown in this goddamn town because some stupid pretty boy baseball player kissed me!”

“Believe me, the party wasn’t that good.” 

Mary pulled her sleeves over her hands and cupped her drink. “Really? I thought Mantle had been planning this since, like, January?” 

“Let’s just say the Fredheads weren’t really on their game tonight. Lots of very miserable song choices. They played ‘Reason to Believe’ twice in a row.”

Mary smiled into her steaming hot chocolate. “Is it bad that I’m happy about that?”

Penelope smiled. “Not at all.”

The two girls sat in companionable silence for a while, Penelope ordered a hot chocolate. When it arrived it was burning hot and sweet. Perfect for a New Year.

Spring arrived as it did every year in Riverdale - in full force. Penelope quit the cheerleading team and instead stayed late in the library every afternoon with Mary. Mary poured over pre-law textbooks, constantly pushing her glasses back up her nose , while Penelope strained her eyes reading dense greek translations. 

One April morning Mary went to the single hair salon in town and had her thick shoulder length hair cut into a blunt boyish bob. Penelope cut her waist length hair to just below her shoulders in her candlelit bathroom that night.

The summer between junior and senior year passed quickly, spending it cloistered in the university library, letting herself in with her father’s key. Nobody ever came in, so she played records and danced between the stacks. It felt something like rebellion.

Senior year passed as everyone said it would, quickly. She went to the faculty Christmas party at the university and ate crackers and sipped soda in the corner. Someone tapped her on the shoulder. 

This Someone was taller and older than her. He looked like a old photograph, something shadowy and beautiful caught the moment between two moments. He had red hair and was handsome in the same way dead presidents were. _Authoritative._ _Important._

He stuck out his hand formally. “Cliff Blossom, Business. Not here though. ”

She shook his hand firmly. “Penelope Parker, High School. Obviously not here though.”

 _That threw him off._ “Ah, you’re Parker’s daughter. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by -” 

“Don’t worry. I turned eighteen in October. You’re not creepy.”

“Well I always aim to do that. Not be creepy that is.” He was getting flustered, a blush creeping up from his turtleneck to his jawline. “Where do you go?” 

“Riverdale High.”

“Well I went to Greendale Prep. We played against you guys in football, right? I was on the team, but I graduated a few years ago.” 

“Sorry, but I don’t really remember you. In my defence though you all look the same with the helmets on.” 

Cliff smiled. “That we do, that we do.”

He plucked two plastic champagne flutes from a passing waiter’s tray and held one out to her. She sipped it delicately, feeling his gaze upon her. Her lipstick stained bloody on the rim.

“So where do you go, if you don’t go here?” 

“Columbia.” 

“That’s amazing, it’s on my list for next year.” 

“Well, if you want I can give you a tour. It’ll probably be better than the ones that the school gives. I won’t sugarcoat.” 

“I wouldn’t expect anything less. Can I actually call you for a tour, it would be amazing to actually hear from someone who goes there?”

“Of course, Penelope.” He pulled a red pen from his jacket pocket and took her hand. He wrote neatly, precisely. Every brush of the pen against her pale skin tickled.

After they had arrived back home that night, Penelope washed her hair free of the sticky hairspray so it lay dark and wet against her pyjamas. Feeling emboldened by the late hour and the moonlight streaming through the curtains, she carefully punched the number on her hand into the family phone.

It barely rang once. 

“Hello, this is Thornhill. Clifford speaking.”

A wave of realisation hit her. “You’re one of _those_ Blossoms!”

She could hear him chuckle through the phone. “Hello Penelope. Shouldn’t a high school girl like you be in bed by now? It is a school night.”

“We broke up for Christmas yesterday, and I knew that I knew your name from somewhere!” Hal had often gone on rants about the Blossoms and the Cooper’s capital B Blood Feud. It was a tawdry story, all blood and bullets and sticky maple syrup, that he loved to tell once he’d had a few drinks smuggled from his parent’s liquor cabinet.

“We are somewhat famous in this neck of the woods,” Cliff said, composed. 

“The woods that you own!”

“We don’t own all of them.” He paused. “Most of them.” 

Penelope laughed at that. “So modest.”

“I try.” She could hear him smiling through the phone. She twirled the twisty cable round her finger like a ponytailed teenager in a penny comic. She could practically see the technicolour speech bubble above her head. “So why did you call this late Penelope?” 

“I wanted to enquire about the tour.”

“And what are your enquiries madame?” 

“Well monsieur, I was wondering when the earliest space you had would be?”

“Would this Saturday fit your busy calendar, madame?” 

“Perfectly.”

It sounded superficial, but she liked the way they looked together, reflected in the shining glass doors of the business department. Their bright titian heads glinted in the wintry morning New York sunlight and his golden watch shone bright on his pale wrist. He sounded right saying the school motto in latin, like an ancient roman senator, crowned in laurels.

 _“In lumine tuo videbimus lumen.”_

“In thy light shall we see light,” she finished for him. She shrugged. “I took latin.”

“So did I.” 

Looking up at him, she saw how his hair glowed like a burning halo in the sun. She shielded her eyes from the light.

Clifford treated her like an adult. He didn’t lock her away like her father did, or completely ignore her like her classmates did. He’d pick her up on Friday nights in his cherry red convertible and take her to dark little restaurants in the city, always telling her to wrap up warm for the ride there. They’d have intellectual conversations from across their table for two, taking tiny sips from the rich red wine he’d ordered for her. The blood red liquid lay thickly in her mouth, bitter down her throat, blurring the edges of her vision. It wasn’t like being drunk at the old cheer parties, or at a Fredheads show; it was slow drunk, heavy, drowning drunk, that made her sink into the white leather passenger seat and into his side as they walked.

He put ‘Tiny Dancer’ on the stereo and tapped his bronzy signet ring against the steering wheel to the tune on the piano. Through her heavy half-closed eyelids, the headlights on the highway all blurred into one another.

The night his father died, he called her. She stayed up late on the phone, listening to his silence. He breathed heavy down the line. At about two in the morning his voice caught mid-breath, and she heard the beginning of a snotty, ugly, gasping sob before he slammed down the phone so hard her ears rang. 

She was on his arm at the funeral, sat perched on the front pew between him and his mother, stumbling over the words in the hymns. The casket was heaped high with cherry blossoms, and the whispering mid-April winds blew dirt mixed with pink petals into the open mouth of the grave along with the handfuls of dark soil scattered by Clifford and his mother. 

Mrs Blossom stood stone still above the grave in the frigid winds with her pale hair wound above the nape of her thin neck, snowy and stark against her black lace dress. Looking at her standing there, Penelope felt Clifford’s gloved hand tighten around her waist. She felt like she was looking into her future, Cliff taking his father’s place and her taking on the role of Mrs Blossom. On the walk back to the main house, she tried to picture herself living here, becoming Mrs Blossom.

She tried to picture her bubblegum Cyndi Lauper albums mixed between the Beethoven sonatas stacked neatly by the record player, her rose perfume bottles and lavender shower gel in the marble bathroom and her cherry cola chilling next to the copious bottles of red wine in the cellar. She thought about her Riverdale High Diploma, in the bright silver frame she had bought in preparation for graduation next month, next to the yellowed certificates from ivy-covered private schools and Ivy League universities in their matching dull gold frames. She tried to imagine herself, in a wedding dress, with Cliff standing next to her in a top hat and tails, hung on the wall with all the other Blossom brides and grooms.

She left early that night, before all the other guests had left. She walked down the long, winding path down the hill to the rest of Riverdale. As night fell, she was still walking, having underestimated the walk home. Stars dotted the sky, but most were covered by a pall of misty clouds. She pulled her black cardigan closer to her body.

As she began to near home she noticed a figure sat on a bench. She couldn’t see the details of his face, just the bulk of his jacket and the shock of hair illuminated against the lights of the orange street lamps. He turned to face her. Fred Andrews wiped his nose with his varsity jacket sleeve and then raised one hand in half hearted greeting. “Hi Penelope.”

“Hi Fred. Are you alright?” Penelope replied, waving back awkwardly. 

“I’m fine,” he said dismissively, although he clearly was not fine. “I should be asking you that. You were up at Thornhill, for Old Man Blossom’s funeral?” 

“Yeah.” They stood like that for a second, her in her mourning clothes, him slumped over on the bench. The silence between the two of them - _technically old friends and actually still schoolmates, but strangers all the while_ \- felt like a betrayal. 

He gulped a tear back and wiped at his red rimmed eyes. Fred Andrews was never one to shy away from signs of emotion. She couldn’t count the times he had cried with joy at baseball games or football games, laughed loudly and inappropriately in school assemblies, thrown punches and insults in equal measure at post-game parties. But now he seemed to have curled into himself. The lithe frame all the girls in the squad used to go crazy over now seemed sickly. She could see the outline of his collar bone through his ripped grey shirt.

“F.P’s leaving.” 

Jones and Andrews - the two musketeers, practically joined at the hips, the hands and the letterman jackets. “That sucks.” 

“And Mary’s leaving. Hal and Alice are practically gone already. Tom’s going to police academy in Greendale and Hermione’s going to New York with what’s his name. Even you’re… up there. ” 

They weren’t friends anymore, but she knew what he was leaving unsaid. From the beginning of senior year, he began to slowly miss out on parties, skip tutoring sessions with Mary in the library, excuse himself from last period. No one said anything, not the teachers, not the students, because they all knew where he had been. Artie Andrews, the family patriarch, town institution, had been fading fast. His sisters; all older, all grown up, began to fly in from all corners of the country, to stand vigil in Riverdale General. He didn’t come in school for a week after it happened. She had seen F.P sat pale with worry at a lunch table wringing his hands, Mary next to him, murmuring words of comfort. 

She remembered driving past the funeral in Clifford’s convertible, with half the town stood sentinel.

She remembered all those years ago, Fred coming into history class freshman year, looking solemn and pale. Hermione had whispered to her at lunch that Fred’s older brother Oscar (she had a few scattered memories of him handing out sweets at Halloween, much taller than Fred: all arms and legs and thick black rimmed glasses, captain of the debating team in his day) had drowned while away at college, before swaying off in her starchy new River Vixens uniform and swinging her arms around his shaking shoulders.

Fred Andrews, who she had seen tangled together with FP Jones in the a parking lot in the dead of night, smoke spilling out of their open mouths and out of the open van doors into the frigid night air. Who had been the second best boyfriend on the cheer squad, slinging his long arms around Hermione’s shoulders on the way back from practice, and who had glared from across the dance floor as she slow danced with the college boy her parents liked. She knew that he had kissed Mary under the snowy branches of Fox Forest on New Year’s Eve, after sharing a tin thermos flask full of irish coffee. 

They weren’t so dissimilar, the prom king and the social outcast. They were both stitched clumsily together from broken families and broken promises. He just hid it better than her.

“I’m not leaving.” 

She knew that didn’t matter, that they weren’t friends. But it was something.

He sniffed loudly, wiping his nose on his sleeve again. “Sorry, you were walking home, do you want a ride, it’s getting late?” 

“Sure, Fred - that’d be great. You remember where I live, right?” 

“Lake Street, number 71?”

She nodded, and took his proffered elbow. They rode in silence, a silver slice of moon reflecting off the dusty windshield. As he pulled up to her house, she touched his hand on the steering wheel. “It’ll all work out fine. No matter how bad everything gets, Fred. It’ll be fine.”

“Truth be told, I don’t really believe you. But thanks for saying that Penelope.” He smiled kindly, and leaned over and opened the door for her. “Have a nice night.” 

“You too Fred.” The unspoken, _‘and have a nice life’_ hung between them.

She slammed the door behind her.

The next time she properly spoke to Fred Andrews was at Hermione’s graduation party. Never one to miss a chance to avoid her peers, Penelope hadn’t been planning on going. But, Cliff and her father (who got on suspiciously well) had pushed her to go, saying that this ‘was going to be her last chance to spend time with her friends, if she was going to college in the fall.’ 

The dress code was strictly fancy dress, so Penelope paired a long black dress with some cheap elbow length gloves, twisted her hair on top of her head and added some of her mother’s old sparkly costume jewelry to it. Even though she knew Audrey Hepburn à la ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ was probably the most cliche costume she could have come up with, she didn’t mind.

When she arrived, the place was already buzzing, so Penelope perched herself on a chair in the hallway, outside of the main party and busied herself with one of Hermione’s mother’s many magazines. It was fun, guessing what peoples costumes were as they bustled past her to get to the action. 

Hal and Alice had walked nervously past her, hand in hand, in their homecoming king and queen finery, with some fake blood smeared on their faces. She sniffed at their minimal effort. F.P Jones awkwardly made small talk with her for a while, swinging his plastic sword back and forth like a pendulum, before running off after Fred in his Indiana Jones costume. Tom Keller and Sierra Samuels had come together, her in a short spangled dress and him dressed the same as he usually did.

“What do you think?” Sierra asked. Penelope shrugged. Sierra elbowed Tom in the ribs, “I told you that you should have worn the jacket! We’re ‘The Bodyguard’.” 

“A.K.A she had a fancy dress that she wanted to wear, and I don’t like to dress up.” Tom added jokingly, before scooping his girlfriend up, bridal style. “Do you think they’ll get it now?”

Sierra smiled into a passionate kiss, and Penelope felt she had to look away, it felt so intimate. As Tom carried her away, Sierra called back to her from over his shoulder, “I like your dress by the way!” 

Penelope waved back, quietly.

By the time Mary arrived; an hour or so later, Penelope was halfway through a personality quiz that should tell her what type of dress she should wear when she got married.

 _You are having doubts about your upcoming marriage, do you..._

A) _ _Get out of there - you trust your instincts more than anything!__

 __B)_ _ _Talk it through with your fiance - he’ll understand that it’s just cold feet._

 _C)_ _Go through with it anyway - you don’t want to disappoint anyone._

B, right it had to be B. Clifford had to listen to her. Mary suddenly came barrelling through the door, letting in a waft of heavy summer heat before she slammed it. Mary fanned herself with the end of her lime green scarf and stole Penelope’s chilled wine glass out of her hand. 

“Daphne, from Scooby Doo, right?” 

Mary nodded, “Yeah. But halfway here, I realised the implications of this costume decision.”

“What implications?” Penelope asked. Then it dawned on her. “Daphne and Freddie…” 

“Yup. Looking forward to all those jokes tonight. What are you reading?” 

“Just some magazine quiz. Telling me what kind of wedding dress I should wear.” 

Mary choked on a mouthful of red wine. “Pen, is there something I should know?” She then reached over and scanned the article. “I’m stuck between A and B. It should be B, but I’d probably be stupid enough to do A.” She shook her head, “I’m stubborn that way. And, please do not tell me you and Clifford are _engaged_!” 

Penelope didn’t answer. 

“Pen, you got into Columbia!”

“And I love him.” Mary gave her a withering look. “And he loves me.” 

“C’mon Pen, this is college and your future and he is a guy!”

“Well, what if I think he might be _the_ guy.” 

“Well, I thought Fred was _the_ guy, but then he just turned out to be _a_ guy.” 

“Clifford is not Fred.”

“No, Fred is a nice guy. Clifford is just… creepy.”

“Hey!” Penelope said indignantly. She then added in a quieter tone, “Fred is looking for you, you know.” 

“Believe me - I know.” Mary replied, flipping her scarf over her shoulder. She sighed. “He is going through a tough time, Pen. And I want to help him, I really do, but -”

“He put you through a tough time as well, I remember.” 

At that moment, Fred poked his head around the double doors, and immediately locked eyes with Mary. They stayed like that for a moment, just caught together, like they couldn’t look away. Mary broke the look first, but then gulped down what was left of Penelope’s stolen wine and looked up back at Fred. 

Wanting to make herself scarce, Penelope stood up quickly, the chair’s ugly scraping breaking the heavy silence that had fallen over the hallway. “I’m going to go get a drink,” she murmured to Mary, brushing her shoulder in support.

She and Fred moved past each other silently, and as she entered the main party, Penelope sighed. There was a reason she didn’t go to these things anymore. Resigned, she wove through the bacchanal of drunk teenagers dressed as various movie characters and pop singers from fifteen years ago, to get to the large spiral staircase. She knew from past party experiences that there was a phone in Mr Gomez’s study. 

After Clifford picked her up from that party, grimacing all the while at the drunk teenagers wandering dangerously close to his cherry red convertible, she didn’t really see any of her old classmates.

Mary went to Chicago. Sierra went to Connecticut. Tom stayed in town for a while, but moved to Greendale in September. F.P left for basic training two days after Hermione’s graduation party. Hermione and that college boyfriend of hers left for New York City a week later, newly equipped with a diamond engagement ring from her father’s jewelry department. Pen knew the one - Hermione had hid it behind some truly shocking bangles the day she saw it in tenth grade so no one else could have it. Fred stayed in town, but on the other side of town. Hal and Alice vanished to Boston in the dead of night, with a secret of their own in tow. 

Her father got sick, and then got sicker and sicker.

She put off Columbia for a year, saying that she had a job interning at a local company, when all she was doing was answering Clifford’s home office phone and redirecting it to the main office in town. She pottered around the house that she wasn’t technically living in, but was spending all of her nights. She made her great grandmother’s sun tea one sticky august morning, leaving the big jug out in the baking sun for a night and a day, and drank it all, from tiny crystal punch glasses, while making a mental inventory of the paintings hung in the darkened corridors.

Her father died in October, the night before Halloween. She got properly drunk that night, sitting in front of the fire with Clifford as he plied them both with cocktails made of rum and lemon and maple syrup, tracing nonsense patterns into his palms. They played the alphabet game in latin, and their pronunciation got worse along with the measurements of the cocktails.

“Alio.” 

“Benedicto.” 

“Carcanum.” 

“Speciosa.” 

“That’s an ‘s’ Cliff, you’re meant to be on ‘d’.

“I meant it, though.” 

She smiled up at him, the firelight turning the auburn of his hair into glowing embers. She wished that she could stay in that moment, where she could pretend she knew he was and pretend she knew their future. Firelight made her romantic, like they were alone against the rest of the world. Like they could leave Riverdale behind and sit on the hills and watch it burn. 

She knew he would never leave. And she knew that she never truly could. 

Her family had only ever existed within these town limits. His was a town institution. All her memories were between the banks of Sweetwater River and trees of Fox Forest. She knew she wasn’t brave enough to leave. 

Sometimes the doubts would drown her, and the jealousy would eat her alive. She caught glimpses of her former peers’ new lives and she felt static, like a stone sat in the middle of a fast moving stream. Like the old lady in the house on the hill, or a ghost haunting the house she died in. 

She picked up a dog-eared Shirley Jackson paperback from the attic of Thornhill. There were boxes and boxes of books up there. Apparently Mrs Blossom’s sister had been a horror fan. 

_Silence lay heavily on the wood and stone of Hill House and whatever walked there, walked alone._

She took walks around the gardens of Thornhill, bundled up against the cold. It did always feel colder up on the hill. Sometimes Clifford would join her, and they would make _turns about the garden,_ and he would talk to her about stock prices and sapling prices and bottling prices. He let her talk about the books that she was reading, the paintings she was researching and anything that crossed her mind to fill the silence before it was snatched away by the wind; but she could always tell that his mind was elsewhere, down in his warm office, with the nameplate, the secretary and the locked door.

In 1995, on one of these walks, he got down on one knee. _(she noticed that he did so on a patch of dry earth, as to not spoil his tweed. She used have fantasies about being proposed to in the rain and the mud, like Jo and Professor Bhaer)._ The ring was silver and ruby and far too big. It slipped right off her thin finger and into the grass. 

_She hadn’t been eating. Whenever she cooked, it was waiting for Clifford, and he got back so late sometimes, that it wasn’t worth re-heating anyway. Cold steak (Clifford’s favourite, bloody and medium rare) was awful. Especially alone._

Penelope wore the ring on a long swinging chain around her neck until she could make an appointment to get it resized. It weighed heavy around her neck, almost the size of a cheap blue cherry ring pop Hal had bought her one sticky summers day. 

The wedding was a quiet affair, in the church on Thornhill’s grounds. On a whim, she invited some old school friends, most of whom turned up. As she walked alone up the short aisle, Mary turned and gave her a tight lipped smile. _‘You look beautiful’_ she mouthed silently. A November wedding might not have been the best idea. Penelope shivered through the vows, teeth nearly chattering as she promised to _love, cherish and obey_ (Mrs Blossom insisted).

Well, she was Mrs Blossom as well.

The reception was in Thornhill. The main rooms had been cleared for dancing and dining. Sierra and her date shivered by the radiator, punch in hand. F.P Jones had turned up late, in slightly rumpled uniform, eyes shining with the look of one too many, with a girl on his arm. She was too tall for her too short shiny black cocktail dress, but would shoot you a look if you looked at her the wrong way - _c’mon, I dare you._

Fred Andrews looked sadly across the parquet floor at Mary, who had brought some guy from law school. John actually was just her study partner for criminal law partner and actually had a boyfriend in Chicago, but Fred didn’t need to know that. 

Clifford trod on her lacy train as they gently swayed to the music. His large warm hand rested heavy on her hip and shoulder and she felt alone in the crowded room with him. In the corner of her eye she saw Hal and Alice sat in the corner, her head on his shoulder. Cyndi Lauper sang _all through the night, I’ll be awake and I’ll be with you, All through the night._

That night, well past midnight, Penelope slipped out from under Clifford’s arm and into their shared bathroom. She thought back to her solemn promise made in the dead of night almost a decade earlier. She fingered the strap of the silky nightgown Mary bought her as a wedding gift, it was a deep, almost purple blue, with a white lace trim.

Mary always told her that a girl should always wear something blue for protection. While they were friends, hiding away in the library for hours on end, it became a private game for her to spot the item of blue Mary would wear that day. _A shiny blue barrette clipped neatly above the ear, a glimpse of a powder blue camisole beneath a white shirt, a soft sweater the colour of a robin’s egg, worn denim blue jeans with holes in the knees._ Who knows, maybe Mary was right. She was in Chicago, in law school, with the boy she had been in love with pining for her from 700 miles away. 

The new Mrs Penelope Blossom always wore blue for luck. Usually it was hidden, somewhere on her person, a watch strap, a slip, the jewel in a pendent, a pair of gloves. But when she got pregnant, _after trying, so much trying,_ she could barely leave the bed, and could hardly fit anything over her swollen belly. 

She poured over baby name books, and highlighted the ones she liked. She settled on two, Jason and Cheryl. 

Jason was of the Argonauts, and went to find the golden fleece to save his father’s lands. One hot summer night, when all the windows were flung open and she slept on top of the sheets, she dreamt of her children: Jason, tall and noble, with hair like his fathers slicked neatly back; Cheryl, smaller, with her waist length hair still tucked girlishly behind her ears.

Jason would save the company from the dark road it was going down. He would lay the golden fleece over the gates of Thornhill, bringing life back. He would be the son they needed. Jason meant healer in Greek. In Hebrew, it meant a gift from God.

Cheryl would be the daughter. The spare to Jason’s heir. This would probably be good for her in the long run. It comes from _cherie, or dear._ Oh, dear.

One dark stormy night, the children were sat cross legged in front of the fire. Jason was playing ‘Happy Families’ with Cheryl, patiently explaining the rules to her. Penelope sat curled up on the sofa, her book abandoned. She listened to the music drifting from the record player.

_When I was just a little girl_

_I asked my mother, what will I be_

Cheryl looked up at her from under her long eyelashes. She always seemed to light up whenever she saw her parents or her brother. At the elementary school they separated her and Jason, so they could connect with the other kids. Cheryl had sobbed for twenty minutes after being dropped off on the first day, until Jason stole a bathroom pass and comforted her in a corner of the library.

Cheryl smiled and waved shyly over Penelope’s shoulder.

_I asked my sweetheart, what lies ahead_

_Will we have rainbows_

_Day after day_

She craned her neck, smiling, expecting to see Clifford, home finally after a trip to Canada. He wasn’t alone. There was a man with him, who turned and slammed the door. Cold washed over the entire room.

Clifford walked over, coat draped over his arm, _nochelent as ever,_ and pressed two kisses to her cheeks. She kept her eyes fixed on the Intruder. He kept his eyes on her, until they wandered over to the fireplace and the children in front of it. 

Something twisted in her stomach. She wanted to gather the children to her, protect them from him.

“Jason, Cheryl - say goodnight to your father and go to bed,” keeping her voice as steady as she could. She watched the Intruder watching her son; eying up the heir to the throne.

After they went upstairs, grumbling all the while, and her husband and the Intruder, retreated into the study, to make plans that she wasn’t privy to, Penelope kept her eyes locked to the door. The late hour and the fire lay heavy on her skin, and she watched the golden light dance over the ring on her left hand. She remembered her worn out copy of the Odyssey, sat somewhere in her dressing room. Penelope felt an amount of sympathy for the other Penelope now, loyally weaving and waiting for her husband, as she sat outside the study. Doris Day still sang from the stereo, the song coming to an end. 

_Que será, será_

_What will be, will be_

_Que será, será._  
  
  
  



End file.
